Bleeding Cowboy

Archival pigment ink print on Somerset Velvet 330gsm paper hand finished with oil pastel with hand-torn deckled edges.

60.5x84.1cm

Signed and numbered edition of 80.

Each print is hand coloured - therefore each print is unique.

Inspired by a Chris Chraus book titled I love Dick and the Menstrala movement.

I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

Chris Kraus

The beginning of the new millennium was also the beginning of the trend aptly named "Menstrala", which exists in art to this day. Menstrala is an unofficial term that hides a variety of ways to represent menstruation in art. It first appeared as the title of a series of Vanessa Tiegs paintings expressing the affirmation of menstruation and research into the relationship between the menstrual cycle and the cycles that occur in nature, such as lunation (the time interval between one new moon and another). Tiegs' dream for "Menstral's word to become as universal as our cycles" has not yet been fulfilled. 20 years have passed since the artist's first painting was published, and most societies still feel discomfort when the word "period" appears in public discussion.

Written by Klaudia Żark